Privacy commissioner launches investigation into Equifax

Canada's privacy watchdog says it has opened an investigation into the massive Equifax Inc. data breach after receiving several complaints and dozens of calls from concerned Canadians.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says that the credit monitoring company has committed to notifying all impacted Canadians in writing as soon as possible, but it will not be calling affected consumers.

Equifax said last week that it was the victim of a massive cyberattack that may have compromised the personal data of as many as 143 million Americans and a limited number of Canadian and U.K. residents, but has not specified how many individuals in Canada were impacted.

The credit monitoring company's call centre staff have told callers that only Canadians that have credit files in the U.S. were likely to be impacted.

However, the privacy commissioner says at this point, it is not clear that the affected data was limited to Canadians with U.S. dealings.

The watchdog added that Equifax will also offer free credit monitoring to those Canadians that are affected.